3 Books to Jump Start Your Leadership Growth

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received about leadership was to learn that becoming a great leader is a lifelong pursuit. It takes a long time. That helped me a lot because I hoped maybe this whole ‘leadership thing’ could be conquered in a weekend.
Yeah, I had a lot to learn and still do.

If leadership growth is your goal, it’s very important to have a working foundation of what leadership is and where you are in your journey. Here are three books to help you set up the proper leadership foundation. These are not by far the only great leadership books. They are just some of my favorites and some of the books I frequently refer back to.

1. 21 irrefutable laws of leadership

If you are serious about wanting to lead anyone, this book is the first one on your list.

There are so many valuable elements in this book that they cannot all be listed here due to copyright restrictions. Basically what I’m saying is it’s all great!

In my opinion, one of the most valuable would have to be the LAW OF THE LID.
Once you begin seeing yourself and others in terms of their leadership level and where their ‘lid’ is, you are better able to understand how to grow and lead them effectively. I refer back to this chapter a lot to also check where my leadership ‘lid’ is as well. I also notice the more I grow, the more I’m able to lead higher level leaders.

The entire book is great. John Maxwell has never written a book that won’t help you be a better leader. However, they must all be read through the lens of this masterpiece.

2. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People

I actually stumbled onto this book by accident originally. When I first began reading I wasn’t prepared for what I experienced.

Stephen Covey does nothing less than help you completely redefine what you value, why you value it, and how to go about getting it.

The basic idea of the entire book is instead of trying to get everything you want, try to become the best ‘you’ you can become and those things will chase you down.

There’s so many great things about this book that they cannot all be stated here but one thing that has really helped me would be putting my “todos” into measurable quantities. “Big Rocks” and “Little Rocks”.

Trust me. It’s a must for setting your leadership foundation up correctly.
The “7 Habits” has been so successful that it’s sold well over 15 million copies and has spawned various sequels such as “Highly Effective Ministry”, “Highly Effective Teenagers”, “Highly Effective Parents”, etc.

3. The Next Generation Leader

This book won’t make many top ten lists and that’s one of the reasons I had to mention it. Andy Stanley’s book on the next generation leader has largely flown under the radar for most people.

This book actually stayed on my book shelf for a few years before I finally got around to it.
When I did… wow. It’s refreshingly practical especially for someone early on into their leadership journey.

Andy talks about many of the small leadership issues I was going through and some of the ‘inner demons’ I was facing as it related to leading others and personal accountability.

This is one of those books I really wish I’d read years earlier. It would have saved some steps along the way and probably some unnecessary pain.

Well this list wasn’t intended to be exhaustive. Just a starter toward building the probably leadership learning foundation.

These are three of my must-have favorite.
Do you agree with my list?
What are some of yours?